OK apart from awful toilet - not recommended for wheelchair users
2.5
2.5
Date of visit: January 2016
I am a disabled person. I have experience of challenges around: accessing toilets and moving around.
I use or have experience of: disabled toilet
Overall Rating
Average
This review is about the branch of Caffè Nero facing directly onto Shepherd's Bush Bus Station, just a few yards from the Central Line station entrance. Overall I had a good experience here but the toilet was absolutely awful and I would not recommend this branch of Caffè Nero to wheelchair users.
Disabled Access In and Around
Good
Step-free access into the café and most tables are wheelchair-friendly. The counter is very high, which is emphatically *not* wheelchair-friendly. There's only just enough space to move around, as the tables are very close together. Customers are cooperative about making space, so this is not an insurmountable problem.
Parking & Transport
Good
This branch of Caffè Nero is just yards from the Shepherd's Bush Overground station, which is step-free and has wheelchair ramps. The tube station is not step-free, despite being very new, which is a puzzle. Zillions of buses come and go, as you would expect, at this bus station. So overall this location is well served by accessible transport.
Accessible Toilets
0The toilet is badged as wheelchair-accessible. It's not. FIVE problems: (1) I wasn't able to open the door wide enough to enter the toilet because someone had thoughtlessly left a wire-frame trolley in the way, I had to get staff to move it. (2) The red cord is much too short and positioned in a corner where anyone with a problem won't be able to reach it. (3) There was a giant bin in the wheelchair transfer area. (4) There is no space to turn a wheelchair around - useless!! (5) There are two door locks, one of them MUCH too high for a wheelchair user to reach. Overall: a disgrace, zero stars.
Staff
Poor
Staff are willing and want to help, but are actually, on the evidence of my visit, not properly trained in disability awareness, and not attentive to such basic things as serving me the thing I requested - I nearly got a coffee with caffeine when I had asked TWICE for decaffeinated. The mindlessly silly positioning of a wire-frame trolley to block the toilet door really does lose this team several points.
Additional Information
The chocolate cake was excellent and my coffee was delicious. But there were so many annoyances with the hopelessly inadequate toilet, which many wheelchair users will be totally unable to use, that I will *not* be returning here again. See my photos below illustrating many of the problems I described earlier about the toilet. If anyone should fall over and/or get injured in this toilet, the red emergency cord will be totally out of reach and the consequences could be very dangerous indeed, and could even expose Caffè Nero to legal difficulties.
